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Talking About What it Means to be Climate-Smart

Unpacking the concept of climate-smart agriculture was the
topic of a side event today at COP19 in Warsaw, jointly held by the Rome-based
United Nations agencies the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the International
Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP).

Climate-smart agriculture is an aggregate of three main pillars:
sustainably increasing production, enabling adaptation and reducing greenhouse
gas emissions said the panelists.

Transferring climate-smart into praxis is a priority of
these organizations, given that the IPCC estimates that agriculture (including
land use change and deforestation) accounts for between 20 and 30 per cent of global
emissions.

“Climate change is a cross cutting issue,” said Wendy Mann
of FAO, therefore implementation of climate friendly technologies and practices
depends upon cooperation across departments to benefit from the full strength
and commitment of government.

“When looking to get the most impact out of climate finance,
it’s best to integrate climate risk analysis early in project planning,” said IFAD’s
Gernot Laganda. “Experience with the Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture
Programme (ASAP) also tells us that grant financing allows small farmers to adopt
more sustainable production, which otherwise would be considered too risky.”

Small farmers can abandon even the best-laid adaptation
plans, if local political and social conditions are barriers to change. This
was the case with one FAO project in Zambia, where low uptake of conservation
agriculture was attributed to insecure land tenure.

The panel also presented successful activities, such as a
tree coppicing initiative by World Vision Australia that has changed how
thousands of farmers in West Africa manage their land, thereby helping to
rehabilitate the landscape.

These types of interventions show that pragmatic solutions are
the ones most suitable to dealing with the unpredictability of climate change; and that the concept of
climate-smart agriculture is firmly rooted in practice.

Comments

I belive that there are good experiances in Ethiopia with its national level watershed development campaigns which run for the last three years. The activities undertaken with small holder farmers have significant adaptation and mitigation potential. The challange is strenghening the organizational structures set to facilitate these actions.